What's missing reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmxrob · 2019-03-03 01:54 What's something you all think is missing in "modern" BBSing -- either missing feature wise, culture wise, tech wise. What is something that you think could be changed to get more people involved/interacting with the BBS subculture? ​ ​ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diseasealert · 2019-03-03 04:37 I was on a couple BBSes in the 90s. I can't say I know what modern BBSing is like, though I'm part of some online communities. Back then, there was really no competition from anything on the internet -- IRC was around, but required a persistent connection for meaningful participation. I connected to local BBSes by phone. I think that's an important point because, at that time, local calls were free and long- distance calls cost money. There was an incentive to connect to systems in my area code. This meant that the other people on the system were physically nearby and we could meet up IRL. Meeting face to face is much more effective when forming relationships. The relationships are what I miss. There's something phantasmagoric about online relationships. For me, they don't have the same weight and value as those that include face time. I'm not saying I can't meet up IRL with people I meet online. I'm just saying that, back then, there were fewer options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opt_in_out_in_out · 2019-03-03 09:38 Culture-wise, for me, back then there were fewer competing things for your attention. There was a scarcity about it. Then, as now, you had to put in a fair bit of effort to get something out, but there were fewer targets for that effort. With BBS's, I also get a similar feeling as when I'm a tourist in another country. I can seek out others who are from where I am from: what we have in common is where we're from, not our other interests. On BBS's now the pool of people is small, and I feel that mostly what we have in common is that we used to use BBS's, not any other interests. I have no solutions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-03-03 14:14 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- myself248 · 2019-03-03 17:36 > having climbed this mountain I find no one else here. ... > put BBSes on telnet/ssh and people can connect to them without sacrificing everything else I think these two statements are interrelated. There's too much else out there, and it's easier to access. Half the value of BBSs was that they existed when nothing else did. The other half was locality (as /u/diseasealert eloquently said), and telnet/ssh robs 'em of that, too. I think the true value of locality and knowing everyone face-to-face, was the diminished presence and influence of trolls. I think the masses are just waking up to the scope and depth of that on other venues, and the stage is set for a resurgence of local-first social networks. However, as much as I personally love text mode, I don't think that's going to be seen as a positive by most of those masses. But then, I also didn't think an artificial 140-character message length limitation made any sense at all, and we all know how that turned out. So who knows. Maybe the obsession with vinyl and all things 80s-retro can be massaged into a renewed fetishization of 80x25, too. Here's my prediction for where this goes: Somewhere out there, right now or in the near future, someone's going to have a BBS or other local-first (or local-only) electronic watering hole, and find a way to make it popular in one small-and-interesting community. Maybe this is an apartment complex, a hackerspace, a college, a refugee camp? And someone in the mass media is going to do a story about it, spawning some interest among readers who wouldn't mind having a similar thing in their neighborhood. What happens after that depends on whether there exists a simple, all- inclusive, "guide to setting up your own BBS just like the one in the article". If that exists and is accessible to folks with motivation but no BBS-legacy insider knowledge, then similar systems pop up all over the place. It'll require some careful positioning and planning by the folks running the thing.